Meryl Streep at the UN for a high-level event on Afghanistan. Meryl Streep: Today in Afghanistan, a cat has more rights than a woman Human Rights
The situation of women in Afghanistan is incomparable. Nowhere in the world are there such restrictions as the Taliban have imposed on the country’s female residents. This was stated by Rosemary DiCarlo, UN Under-Secretary for Political Affairs, at a high-level event on Afghanistan at the UN headquarters in New York.
Interaction of the International Community with the Taliban
She recalled that the UN is leading the so-called Doha Process to expand international interaction with Afghanistan.
“This process requires a step-by-step approach. We expect the de facto authorities to make governance more inclusive, respect the rights of women and girls, as well as human rights in general, and step up effective counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts. In exchange, the international community will gradually ease its restrictions,” DiCarlo said.
“The goal is to force the Taliban to live up to their commitments – first and foremost to the Afghan people – and to the international community. This is the only way Afghanistan can return to the international community,” she added.
DiCarlo noted that the complex process involves representatives or special envoys from about 30 countries and organizations.
“We are bringing them together to engage directly with the Taliban and a broad range of Afghans, including women leaders and activists,” she said.
At the last meeting in this format in July of this year, DiCarlo and many other participants raised the issue of unacceptable restrictions on women and girls and noted that this was an obstacle to the international community’s engagement with the Taliban.
“While the Taliban refused to meet with Afghan civil society, special envoys held separate talks with civil society, including Afghan women. “We had hoped that this meeting in Doha would be the beginning of a new chapter in a more meaningful dialogue with the de facto authorities,” DiCarlo said.
But the recent passage of the “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice” law, which imposes additional restrictions on women, could reverse that process, DiCarlo warned.
UN chief demands immediate lifting of all restrictions
Without recognition of the rights and freedoms of half of its population, Afghanistan will never take its rightful place on the world stage, the UN chief said at the meeting.
“Countries and organizations around the world, including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, urge respect for the fundamental rights of Afghan girls and women,” Antonio Guterres said.
“I join them in demanding that the de facto authorities immediately lift all discriminatory restrictions against women and girls and open schools and universities to girls after the sixth grade,” he added.
Suppressing the “law of nature”
American actress Meryl Streep, who also took part in the event on Afghanistan, in turn, stated that an Afghan woman today has fewer rights than a cat, a squirrel or a bird.
“Today in Kabul, a cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat can sit on the porch and sun her face. She can chase a squirrel into the park. Today in Afghanistan, a squirrel has more rights than a girl, because public parks were closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird can sing in Kabul, but a girl or a woman cannot sing in public,” Streep said.
“It’s a repression of the law of nature,” she added.
At the same time, the actress recalled that in the past, Afghan women had many rights, some of which they received much earlier than Western women.
“In 1971, I graduated from college here in New York, and that same year women in Switzerland got the right to vote. Women in Afghanistan have had this right for half a century. Women in Afghanistan got the right to vote in 1919,” Streep said.
In the 1970s, she said, most government workers in Afghanistan were women, as were more than half of the doctors and teachers, and they were represented in almost every profession.
“The way this culture, this society, has changed so dramatically is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world,” she said.
Streep believes that the Sunni community and the international community as a whole can influence the situation in Afghanistan and stop the “strangulation” of half the country’s population.